


Late Nights

by oOAchilliaOo



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-02
Updated: 2018-03-02
Packaged: 2019-03-26 02:04:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13847769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oOAchilliaOo/pseuds/oOAchilliaOo
Summary: Shepard has difficulty sleeping.But then that’s nothing new especially since Eden Prime. What is new is the reason she’s awake.It’s different. And terrifying





	Late Nights

She’d chewed through her lip so much it was bleeding. She could taste it, metallic in her mouth. What she couldn’t do was move, or, you know, sleep.

This wasn’t like her. She wasn’t one to lie awake and worry about the future.

Very occasionally, she might lie awake and go over the past, but that was fair. There was a lot of shit in her past. Probably a lot of ignored trauma too. Sometimes her subconscious liked to remind her that she couldn’t ignore it forever, which she supposed was only right. The result was often a lack of sleep.

However, she’d never worried about the future before. Wondered about it maybe, planned it a little, but never _worried_ about it.

But now… Now, she worried that patrolling the Terminus, hunting geth, was a waste of her time. She worried that she might perish in some skirmish before the Reapers arrived. She worried about what would happen if the Council never woke the fuck up. She worried that they’d never live to get the white picket fence that _he_ so wanted. Conversely, she worried that they’d get exactly the white picket fence he so wanted and that she’d hate it.

Though, looking at him fast asleep, his head pillowed on her chest, his hair adorably mussed, drooling in a way that would make him blush if he knew, it was hard for her to imagine hating anything that he was a part of.

Urgh.

Since when had she gotten so _sappy?_

Oh God, had _he_ turned her sappy?

Was she becoming _a romantic?_

Were they going to start hanging around in rowboats reciting poetry to each other? Not that there was anything wrong with poetry, or rowboats, come to that, but _together…_

“Stop worrying.”

It was a quiet, sleepy mumble but it cut through the noise in her head like a twelve inch turian combat knife.

There, that was better.

“I’m not,” she insisted, taking the opportunity to shift a little now that he was awake.

“Yes, you are. I can hear you,” he shot back, remaining resolutely unmoving despite the fact that he was clearly awake.

“You can’t hear people’s thoughts.”

“I can,” he insisted. “Freaky biotic powers, remember?”

She didn’t bother to dignify that with a response beyond the obligatory disbelieving snort, even though he was right. She _had_ been worrying and she shouldn’t have been.

But then…

“Stop it,” he whined, sounding dangerously close to a needy toddler.

“I can’t help it.” Her focus was still mostly on the ‘what ifs’ running through her head. “I have a lot more to lose these days and if...”

“Look,” he interrupted, finally lifting his head enough to look at her. The movement left him in a very similar position to the one he’d been in when they’d originally collapsed hours ago. She stores this fact in the recesses of her brain in case she needs to distract him from the conversation. “We can’t predict the future, right? All we can do is react to the present and right now. And right now, I only know two things for sure. The first is that I love you.”

He said it with that unerringly soft and undeniably affectionate tone that left the truth of his words in no doubt whatsoever.

She loved it. Loved him.

“I love you too,” she said, hoping that her tone conveyed even a fraction of the certainty that his had. Then, when he didn’t seem inclined to continue, “What’s the second thing?”

He grinned, a wide shit-giving grin that made her deeply suspicious.

“You just said it,” he said simply, eyes twinkling.

She punched him because there was absolutely no other acceptable response to that.

Fortunately, all he did was laugh as he collapsed beside her.

She hit him again.

“Of all the cheesy,” - punch - “idiotic,” - punch - “ _stupid_ ” - punch - “things to say,” she replied, deliberately ignoring the fact that she was grinning too.

“I surrender, I surrender!” he pleaded, still chuckling as he caught her fists in his own hands. “Little too much?” he asked after a moment, letting his grin tell her that he wasn’t seriously asking.

“Little bit.” She refused to admit that the real answer was ‘not at all’. 

“Aw well,” he said, not sounding disappointed in the least. “At least it stopped you worrying.”

Annoyingly he was right. She hated that and she hated the fact that as he pulled her close, tucking her into his side so that they could sleep, all she could think about was the fact that she’d been _outplayed._

Damn.

Well, this wouldn’t do _at all._   


End file.
